There was a song I heard first when I was a little
boy—a song about Christmas and home. Those were days
of war when many people were away from their homes
and family—a dark time for those who feared that
they might not be reunited with loved ones in this
life. I remember my feelings for home and family
when I walked by one house on the way to school at
Christmastime and saw a little flag with a gold star
on it hung in the window. It was the home of a girl
I knew in school. Her brother, not much older than
I, had been killed in the war. I knew his parents
and felt some of what they did. On the way home
after school, I would feel grateful anticipation for
the glad welcome I knew awaited me.
When I turned on the radio in our living room during
the Christmas season, I would hear words and music
that still echo in my mind. A few lines of that song
touched my heart with a yearning to be with family.
I was living with my parents and my brothers in a
happy home, so I knew somehow that the yearning I
felt was for more than to be in a house or in the
family life I then enjoyed. It was about some future
place and life, even better than I knew or had yet
imagined.
The line of the song that I
remember best is “I’ll be home for Christmas / If
only in my dreams.”1 The
house in which I decorated Christmas trees with my
mother and father in those happy days of my
childhood still stands, largely unchanged. A few
years ago I went back and knocked on the door.
Strangers answered. They allowed me to step into the
rooms where the radio had been and where our family
had gathered around the Christmas tree.
I realized then that the desire of my heart was not
about being in a house. It was about being with my
family, and it was a desire to feel enveloped in the
love and the Light of Christ, even more than our
little family had felt in the home of my childhood.
Longing for Eternal Love
What all of us long for in our
hearts, at Christmastime and always, is to feel
bound together in love with the sweet assurance that
it can last forever. This is the promise of eternal
life, which God has called His greatest gift to His
children
D&C 14:7.
That is made possible by the gifts to us of His
Beloved Son: the Savior’s birth, Atonement, and
Resurrection. It is through the Savior’s life and
mission that we have the assurance that we can be
together in love and live forever in families.
The feeling of longing for home is born into us.
That wonderful dream cannot become real without
great faith—enough for the Holy Ghost to lead us to
repentance, baptism, and the making and keeping of
sacred covenants with God. This faith requires
enduring bravely the trials of mortal life. Then, in
the next life, we can be welcomed by our Heavenly
Father and His Beloved Son to that home of our
dreams.
Even in this life we can have an assurance of the
coming of that day and feel some of the joys we will
know when at last we arrive home. The celebration of
the Savior’s birth at Christmas gives us special
opportunities to experience those joys in this life.
Finding the Promised Joy
Many of us have lost loved ones to death. We may be
surrounded by individuals who seek to destroy our
faith in the gospel and the Lord’s promises of
eternal life. Some of us are troubled with illness
and with poverty. Others may have contention in the
family or no family at all. Yet we can invite the
Light of Christ to shine on us and let us see and
feel some of the promised joys that lie before us.
For instance, as we gather in
that heavenly home, we will be surrounded by those
who have been forgiven of all sin and who have
forgiven each other. We can taste some of that joy
now, especially as we remember and celebrate the
Savior’s gifts to us. He came into the world to be
the Lamb of God, to pay the price of all of the sins
of His Father’s children in mortality so that all
might be forgiven. In the Christmas season we feel a
greater desire to remember and ponder the Savior’s
words. He warned us that we cannot be forgiven
unless we forgive others
Matthew 6:14–15.
That is often hard to do, so you will need to pray
for help. This help to forgive will come most often
when you are allowed to see that you have given as
much or more hurt than you have received.
When you act on that answer to your prayer for
strength to forgive, you will feel a burden lifted
from your shoulders. Carrying a grudge is a heavy
burden. As you forgive, you will feel the joy of
being forgiven. At this Christmastime you can give
and receive the gift of forgiveness. The feeling of
happiness that will come will be a glimpse of what
we can feel at home together in the eternal home for
which we yearn.
Feeling the Joy of Giving
There is another glimpse of that joyful future home
that we can see more easily at Christmastime. It is
the feeling of giving with a generous heart. This
can come as we feel the needs of others more than
our own and when we sense how generous God has been
to us.
It helps to see the kindness of others at
Christmastime. How many times have you gone to leave
a gift on a doorstep, hoping not to be noticed, only
to find more than one unmarked gift already there?
Have you felt, as I have, the impression to help
someone only to find that what you were inspired to
give was exactly what someone needed at that very
moment? That is a wonderful assurance that God knows
all of our needs and counts on us to fill the needs
of others around us.
God sends those messages to us with more confidence
at Christmastime, knowing that we will respond
because our hearts are more sensitive to the
Savior’s example and to the words of His servants.
At Christmastime, we are more likely to have read
recently and been touched by the words of King
Benjamin. He taught his people, and he teaches us,
that the overwhelming gift of forgiveness that we
receive should make us feel an overflowing
generosity toward others:
“And behold, even at this time, ye have been calling
on his name, and begging for a remission of your
sins. And has he suffered that ye have begged in
vain? Nay; he has poured out his Spirit upon you,
and has caused that your hearts should be filled
with joy, and has caused that your mouths should be
stopped that ye could not find utterance, so
exceedingly great was your joy.
“And now, if God, who has created you, on whom you
are dependent for your lives and for all that ye
have and are, doth grant unto you whatsoever ye ask
that is right, in faith, believing that ye shall
receive, O then, how ye ought to impart of the
substance that ye have one to another.
“And if ye judge the man who putteth up his petition
to you for your substance that he perish not, and
condemn him, how much more just will be your
condemnation for withholding your substance, which
doth not belong to you but to God, to whom also your
life belongeth; and yet ye put up no petition, nor
repent of the thing which thou hast done.
“I say unto you, wo be unto
that man, for his substance shall perish with him;
and now, I say these things unto those who are rich
as pertaining to the things of this world”
Mosiah 4:20–23.
You have already felt the joy of giving alms and
receiving them. That joy in this life is a glimpse
of what we will feel in the life to come if we are
generous here out of faith in God. The Savior is our
great exemplar. At the Christmas season we
contemplate anew who He is and what generosity He
extended to us by coming into the world to be our
Savior.
As the Son of God, born to
Mary, He had the power to resist all temptation to
sin. He lived a perfect life so that He could be the
infinite sacrifice, the unblemished Lamb promised
from the foundation of the world
Revelation 13:8.
He suffered the agony of the guilt of our sins and
all the sins of the children of Heavenly Father that
we might be forgiven and go home clean.
He gave us that gift at a price we cannot fathom. It
was a gift He did not need for Himself; He was
without the need for forgiveness. The joy and
gratitude we feel for His gift now will be magnified
and will last forever as we honor and worship Him in
our heavenly home.
The Christmas season gives us encouragement to
remember Him and His infinite generosity.
Remembering His generosity will help us feel and
respond to the inspiration that there is someone who
needs our help, and it will let us see the hand of
God reaching to us when He sends someone to succor
us, as He so often does. There is joy in giving and
in receiving the generosity that God inspires,
especially at Christmas.
Blessed with His Light
There is another glimpse of
heaven that becomes easier to see at Christmastime.
It is of light. Heavenly Father used light to
announce the birth of His Son, our Savior
Matthew 2; 3
Nephi 1. A
new star was visible in both the Eastern and the
Western Hemispheres. It led the Wise Men to the
child in Bethlehem. Even wicked King Herod
recognized the sign; he feared it because he was
wicked. The Wise Men rejoiced because of the birth
of the Christ, who is the Light and the Life of the
World. Three days of light without darkness was the
sign God gave to the descendants of Lehi, heralding
the birth of His Son.
We remember at Christmastime not only the light that
announced the birth of Christ into the world but
also the light that comes from Him. Many witnesses
have confirmed that light. Paul testified that he
saw it on the road to Damascus:
“I saw in the way a light from heaven, above the
brightness of the sun, shining round about me and
them which journeyed with me.
“And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a
voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew
tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is
hard for thee to kick against the pricks.
“And I said, Who art thou,
Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest”
Acts 26:13–15.
The boy Joseph Smith testified that he saw a
marvelous light in a grove of trees in Palmyra, New
York, at the beginning of the Restoration:
“Just at this moment of great alarm, I saw a pillar
of light exactly over my head, above the brightness
of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell
upon me.
“It no sooner appeared than I
found myself delivered from the enemy which held me
bound. When the light rested upon me I saw two
Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all
description, standing above me in the air. One of
them spake unto me, calling me by name and said,
pointing to the other—This
is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!”
Joseph Smith—History
1:16–17.
Such light will be visible in
our heavenly home. It will bring us joy then. Yet
even in this life you have been blessed with a part
of that wonderful experience, through the Light of
Christ. Every person born into the world receives
that light as a gift
Moroni 7:16.
Think of the times you have had an experience that
makes you a witness that the Light of Christ is real
and precious. You will recognize from this
wonderfully assuring scripture that you have been
guided by that light:
“And that which doth not edify is not of God, and is
darkness.
“That which is of God is light; and he that
receiveth light, and continueth in God, receiveth
more light; and that light groweth brighter and
brighter until the perfect day.
“And … I say it that you may
know the truth, that you may chase darkness from
among you”
D&C 50:23–25.
In a world that is being darkened by evil images and
dishonest messages, you have been blessed to
recognize more easily the flashes of light and
truth. You have learned for yourself that light
grows brighter as you receive it gladly. It will
become brighter and brighter until the perfect day
when we will be in the presence of the Source of the
light.
That light is easier to
discern at Christmastime, when we are more likely to
pray to know what God would have us do and more
likely to read in the scriptures and so more apt to
be on the Lord’s errand. When we forgive and feel
forgiveness, when we are lifting the hands that hang
down
D&C 81:5,
we are being lifted ourselves as we move toward the
Source of the light.
You remember that the Book of
Mormon describes a glorious time when the Savior’s
faithful disciples reflected His light for others to
see
3 Nephi 19:24–25.
We use lights to celebrate the Christmas season. Our
worship of the Savior and our service for Him brings
light into our lives and into the lives of those
around us.
We can with confidence set a goal to make this
Christmas brighter than the last and each year that
follows brighter still. The trials of mortality may
increase in intensity, yet for us, darkness need not
increase if we focus our eyes more singly on the
light that streams down on us as we follow the
Master. He will lead us and help us along the path
that leads upward to the home for which we yearn.
There have been times, often at Christmas, when we
have felt parts of what we will experience when we
at last come home to the Father who loves us and
answers our prayers and to the Savior who has
lighted our lives and lifted us up.
I testify that because of Him, you may have an
assurance that you can go home not only at
Christmastime but also to live forever with a family
whom you love and who love each other.
